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The EU as an International Actor: Engaging with the Neighbourhood

Current international events have intensified focus on the European Union’s foreign and security policies. The EU, in response to challenges within its own borders, in its wider region and beyond, published its Global Strategy for European Foreign and Security Policy in 2016. The British referendum result and Brexit has also challenged the EU’s identity as a strategic actor in international affairs.

This module explores the evolution of the EU as a foreign policy and security actor and the debates about its evolving identity. It does so through first, assessing the utility of conceptual and theoretical schools of thought in explaining and helping us to understand how integration has evolved in security and defence, and second, in critically engaging in the debates relating to the EU’s identity as a global power in the 21st century. The module applies the theoretical debates to practical examples of the EU’s capabilities in relation to what has been labelled by many the EU’s ‘most successful foreign policy tool’ in enlargement, the EU’s neighbourhood policy, and the EU’s fitful relationship with Russia.